NASCAR to disqualify illegal cars in move to squash cheating
CONCORD, N.C. (AP) — NASCAR announced Monday that it will disqualify race-winning cars that break the rules this season, confronting its longtime culture of cheating with a stringent new penalty system.
“If you are illegal, you don’t win the race,” said Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s chief racing development officer. “We cannot allow inspection and penalties to continue to be a prolonged storyline. Race vehicles are expected to adhere to the rule book from the opening of the garage to the checkered flag.”
The new approach is a seismic shift for NASCAR because it traditionally wanted fans to leave the event knowing who won the race. If a car failed inspection, either at the track or in a more thorough secondary teardown at NASCAR’s Research and Development Center in the days following the race, driver and team were usually docked points, fined or in some cases had crew members suspended.
The penalties were typically not announced until several days after the race.
Inspections will now be completed at the track, a process that should take about 90 minutes, and the winning team will lose its victory if it fails. Disqualified cars will now lose points, purse money and even the trophy.
Kevin Harvick’s race-winning car failed inspection twice last season and both instances led to fines, suspensions and the loss of points. He won at Texas Motor Speedway in November to earn an automatic berth into the championship finale, but that was stripped when his car failed the R&D inspection days after the race.
Under the new system, the runner-up will be declared the winner and the team with the illegal car will receive only one championship point.
“We’re really looking at a total culture change,” O’Donnell said.
The last driver believed to have been stripped outright of a national series victory was Dale Jarrett following a 1995 race in NASCAR’s second-tier series at Michigan. He was dropped to 42nd when his Ford was found to have an illegally modified intake manifold two hours after the race.
NASCAR will also change its process for cars that fail inspection prior to qualifying and the race.
It had devolved into comedy at times last season as teams used multiple attempts to get through inspection. NASCAR said it will now eject team members, dock practice time and, in an enhanced penalty, bar a car from trying to qualify for the race if it fails three times. A car that twice fails pre-race inspection will be sent to the back of the field at the start; a third failure will require a pass-through penalty at the start.
“We’ve been through a deterrence model where we’ve really worked with the race teams at the track and probably been more lenient than we should in terms of the number of times teams can go through inspection and pass, fail and there’s almost incentive to try to get something by NASCAR, so we want to really reverse that trend,” O’Donnell said.